You Cannot Know A Dream 'Til You've Known The Nightmare
by Unoriginality
Summary: It was like hanging in that space between waking and sleep, where the nightmare continued, but the end was in sight. The Soldier hoped he'd wake up to the world that used to be.


A/N: Written for theme "What Earth once was." RDX is a specialized explosive material called "cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine," but I decided that was one helluva mouthful, so I used its short name. Rating based on the fact that I don't think I'd let a kid under thirteen read even this much detail about how to blow up a building successfully.

* * *

The Soldier wasn't sure who he was. Not anymore. Not since Steve. Not since the museum. But so little existed in his mind to counter the years where there'd been nothing but Hydra. There was a world he once lived in before them, and he could feel it, could remember bits here and there, like a dream woken up from. The knowledge that there'd been that dream was there. The certainty of it. Images and feelings were associated with it, but there wasn't enough solid to be able to tell its story.

But he knew that the dream of the years before had been good ones. He remembered smiling, something he hadn't done once as long as he could remember in his time with Hydra.

He knew he'd smiled. He knew he'd laughed. And he knew it'd been Steve that had earned most of that, had caused that joy.

But he couldn't remember enough of that wonderful dream he'd been pulled from to be comfortable finding Steve- or rather, letting Steve find him, the Soldier had never lost track of him -and asking for a forgiveness he knew he already had. He wasn't there yet, although the desire to just say Steve's name to him, to hear Steve call him Bucky, as if that dream had never ended, was difficult to ignore.

But that didn't change that Hydra was the dream he remembered the most.

He knew Hydra was still everywhere. There was too many bases, too many agents and operatives left in the world for the takedown of SHIELD to have broken them completely. That had driven them underground, but not killed them.

But the Soldier could destroy something they held over him. He could destroy the safehouse they'd kept him in.

Explosives were not hard to get, Hydra had stashes everywhere, and too many operatives had been tracked and arrested for them to be able to get to everything. And the Soldier had made his decision before questioning those operatives could've led the authorities to where all of those stashes were. Hydra's weaponry was powerful enough to blast the entire building to the ground, the safe included, that wretched safe where that chair was.

That was what he wanted destroyed more than anything. Destroyed so that it could never erase that world he used to live in again.

Taking the explosives to the bank was also not hard. Not with the Soldier's training, not with his knowledge of that place, where the back entrances were that would keep the public from seeing that several armed men were coming and going with technicians in lab coats and an unknown man with a metal arm. There were back ways in. Ways only Hydra knew about. Ways only the Soldier knew about.

The actual job of taking down the building was a bit more complicated than simply sneaking explosives in, hitting a timer, and getting out before the place blew. He trashed the vault, ripping apart equipment and computers, leaving one computer behind to be the battery on his detonator.

A thermal lance bored holes into the supports of the vault, holes big enough to stick a healthy amount of RDX in. The RDX would blast the steel around the supports in half, letting the first floor collapse down onto the vault. That'd hide the remains of the equipment he was leaving behind. The concrete supports on the ground and second floor would send the building collapsing in on itself, burying the remains of the vault to where nothing inside would be recognizable.

It wouldn't end Hydra's existence. But maybe, just maybe, it'd end their grip on his mind so he could find that wonderful dream that used to be his, take it back and relegate Hydra to the nightmare bin, something to ultimately fade and become nothing but a distant memory. He wanted to go home to that feeling that Steve had invoked.

He waited until night, when there'd be a minimal number of people outside who could get hit by debris. He hooked up the remaining computer he hadn't destroyed to the explosives with a lead line that attached to the detonator, and synched it to a phone he'd stolen and reprogrammed. Once he was sure the system would work as it should, checking it twice and three times, he shoved the phone in his pocket and snuck out, taking the back ways out.

He made sure he was a few blocks away, made his way to the top of the highest building he could get up, and stood still. It was spring, the breeze was still chilly, especially at night. The roads were well lit, and there was no traffic at that hour. Hydra hadn't exactly chosen a bank in the busiest section of town.

For a minute, all he could do was stand quietly, ignoring the hair that got in his face as the breeze ruffled it. It'd take all of five seconds, and his most recent memories of Hydra would be buried in a dusty, concrete tomb. It was like hanging in that space between waking and sleep, where the nightmare continued, but the end was in sight.

He hoped he'd wake up to the world that used to be.

The Soldier pulled the phone out of his pocket and clicked the detonate button. Within seconds, the computer inside ran hot, sending electrical heat down the lead line and into the detonator end, setting off the primer charge.

There was no ball of fire visible from the street when the explosives went off with a loud blast of noise that would put thunder to shame. There was just an endless wave of dust and debris that exploded out the windows of the first two floors, and then gravity pulled the rest of the building down on top of its destroyed supports. The very air rumbled like under a low flying jet, shaking glass in the buildings around him.

Then the noise stopped, though the dust remained billowed into the air, and would take several minutes to start settling. For a few wonderful minutes, it was quiet. Sirens would follow soon as rescue workers and law enforcement responded to the scene, but for that moment, it was quiet. The chair was gone, the computers were destroyed beyond recognition and the whole building, a place to hide a weapon, was no longer there.

Bucky put the phone back in his pocket, and turned, leaving the nightmare behind.


End file.
